"I don't want to be 50 and walking around in my leather skirt, saying 'Hey, remember me?'"

"If you wanna know what the weather's like - just look out the window."

"I was a tomboy. My mother said I didn't know I was a girl until I was eight. Nobody told me!"

"You can either sit in a room and sulk or get off your backside and do something about your life."

"People tell me I look smaller and younger and prettier in person, which is a way of saying that on TV, I look older, fatter and uglier. Right?"

"Treat everyone the same until you find out they're an idiot.";

quotes[7] = "Unless they're extremely drunk, men won't approach me. I've only been asked out twice in 10 years - by Troy the refrigerator man and Donald Trump who asked me out for a drink."

"I've got a good kick, I can throw a punch and I've learnt not to cry."

"I met so many women and girls who feel, to use their word and I'm a bit embarrassed, but it's a good word - empowered, by watching Xena. I realised this isn't a burden - it's an honour."

"When people meet me for the first time they often are disappointed. They think I'm a giant and that I have to bend to get into a room and they think I have huge breasts. Not true at all. The secret is that we use small people for the other roles."

"Superman's a nerd. Xena will beat him within a minute. She would say 'Look, somebody stole your cape' and then she puts him back in the phone booth."

"There is a Playstation game of Xena but I'm not good at it. I always walk into walls and stuff."

"Stars always complain that their action figure do not resemble them at all. What a crap! I'm really proud of the fact that there is a mini Xena in the stores. I even gave my daughter one."

"I jumped from a helicopter once. That was a 250 meter fall but I wasn't really impressed. When you're hanging that high above ground you don't feel like you're looking death in the eye. Unfortunately. I'd rather jump from bridges."

"The chakram is my favorite weapon! You can do lots of things with it: shave your legs, clean the fish, slit someone's throat, draw a perfect circle... you can even wear it on your head."

"You've got to be careful what you wish for."

"Unco was my nickname in school. It's short for uncoordinated. I sucked at sports. I always was the last one to be chosen for softball and volleyball."

"I tried to make it in the US but I never succeeded. I never got a normal part because they thought I was too tall."

"Women can be as badass as any man ever was."

"I'm very happy my character (Xena) fills a niche. I hadn't realised there was a shortage of strong female role models. If I help women to feel strong and confident, that's fine with me."

"Feel the fear and do it anyway."

"It seems totally natural to me that women are equal to but different to men. I never questioned that it was any other way."

"I want to do something that makes a difference. I want to be part of something that either makes people laugh or makes people think and feel. I don't want to do anything in between"

"I have always had a kind of New Age philosophy that good things come out of bad packages. Everything happens for a reason. "

"I'm not a sex symbol in my own house. I'm boring old Mom."

"In a modern world, Xena would be classified as having Attention Deficit Disorder and put on Ritalin."

"We (New Zealanders) live at the edge of the world, so we live on the edge. Kiwis will always sacrifice money and security for adventure and challenge."

"I gave Xena every ounce of everything I had. It wasn't just the acting. There was a lot of other baggage that came with it."

"You always strive for excellence, because to aim for anything else is a waste of life."

"Xena is a woman who doesn't rely on a man for help, and that's a good message for us all."

"I can't complain about my bank account but I don't do anything weird. I've always been an economical girl. When I grew up my father was a mayor. And I always thought that he had to pay for all the water that was used in town. When children at my school let the water running I said 'Stop it! You're wasting my father's water!'"

"In 1989 I became Miss New Zealand but that's not a title I'm proud of. Let's just say I was 19 and very stupid"

"I went to nun school for a year. That was kind of fun but I never really thought they were actual women. With those long dresses, I always was wondering if they had legs or not"

"I auditioned once in school for Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and I didn't want to go for the woman's role because she was goofy, young and stupid. I wanted to play the guy, and I knew I could pull it off, because it was a comic role."

"I remember when my father told me that men could jump longer in the long jump than girls. It was a shocking revelation to me. I thought I could run just as fast and jump just as high. And the rest of my life l've been trying to prove that."

"Rizzo (in Grease) was a tough chick. I spent nine days rehearsing for the role and then I woke up the next morning after the opening night and I screamed. I thought, 'Oh my God, I've got to do that same script 64 more times! It's like the movie Groundhog Day!"

"I realized at a very young age I would die and that really scared the hell out of me. So I learned to go for it and take the risk."

"I think the show's popularity among women stems from the fact that Xena carries the message 'Yes I can' in both her actions and her demeanour. 'Yes I can,' all alone, with no visible means of male support... we haven't had this kind of role model in the popular media for quite some time, and not ever in episodic television."

"It's ridiculous how much attention the media pays to supermodels and silicon-inflated women. They aren't real - they're terrible male fantasies. Girls who look up to Xena can at least see that they don't have to correspond to the preposterous fashion magazine images that make girls anorexic."

"Nothing makes me angrier than someone who is no good at their job. If you're no good at it, or don't like it, then go and do something else, but don't waste my time and money."

"You can't be looking at external factors to shore up your own soul. That just doesn't happen - it all comes from within."

"I'm a computer retard. I don't have the time to learn. I don't even own one. Besides, I'd be a bit shy about the Internet. You don't know what people are saying about you. I have friends who keep me posted and messages often get through to me."

"Did you know that women in New Zealand had the vote before other women anywhere else in the world? We're strong because it was a hard land to colonise."

"The whole fame thing makes me giggle. I just roll with the punches."

"I am a woman's woman. I love hanging out with women."

"I enjoy playing a woman with a masculine bent, a woman you can have a beer with. Xena is threads of my character taken to extremes."

"What I've learnt is that you have to surrender to everything that you can't change in life. If you can't be together with the ones you love you have to learn to love the ones you're with. Appreciate the input of other people. Otherwise you will become really unhappy."